Black Band Shorts

The world is dead. Humanity's existence depends on sophisticated living compounds, isolated from the cold and barren landscape beyond. The people without them, once driven to theft and murder, are believed to have perished long ago. Alden is an engineering genius, spending his days perfecting the complex systems which he and his wife Lauren need to survive. Everything is running exactly as he wants it - until the power begins to fail. As cracks appear in the world Alden has created for himself, he won't be able to ignore the truth for much longer...

When Andrew bought a carved figure from The Peddler, he thought he was doing the old man a favor. When three violent criminals came to give his shop a shakedown, he realized it was the other way around. In this fantasy, horror novelette, a luscious, green park stands as a beacon of thriving life in the midst of a fledgling city where criminals run rampant. The police are either helpless, ignorant, or criminals themselves. Between the park and the city sits The Peddler, a blind hermit who whittles remarkably lifelike figurines of history's bravest warriors - miniature statues that seem to find their way to the victims of the city's injustices. Does fate favor the innocent? Or is there more to The Peddler and his carvings... The Peddler is the third in an anthology series of stand-alone short works of spec-fiction called Black Band Shorts.